Why you should have a strong online presence

We live in an age where everything is online. From reading the news to buying clothes to finding the right plumber, you can find just about anything that you need at the click of a button. Because of this, an online presence is essential for a company or organization today. Your online presence is important because it allows consumers to find you, interact with you and get to know you, your vision and your values.

Having a strong online presence makes it easier for your organization or company to be found and in return can bring in a larger audience with minimal effort. A strong online presence creates multiple channels for your organization to gain an audience since we rarely use phone books or newspapers to find information now a day. Aside from gaining a new audience, an online presence gives an organization a voice to reach the audience that they already have. Sending out a tweet or posting a blog update is a very effective way to reach a mass audience. A strong online presence creates 24-hour accessibility for the consumers. This allows consumers to research your product or service and potentially order items whenever is convenient for them.

Another positive aspect of having a strong online presence is the opportunity to fight negative content with positive content. An organization can use Google Alerts to monitor any comments or mentions of their brand. If a negative article comes out about your company, having an online presence gives you the opportunity to respond to the negativity with a press release or feature story to your audience quickly.

Engaging in search engine optimization and getting action on social media are just two of many ways that an organization can build a strong online presence. The easiest and least time consuming way to build an organization’s online presence is to stay up to date and continue to keep all online sites active. Today most consumers use the Internet to search for products or services, compare prices, or look at reviews. Because of this, an organization’s website is essential to a strong online presence. An organization’s website contains all of their information from contact info to FAQ to links to their social media accounts. Through their website, an organization can create more visibility through search engine optimization (SEO). By making sure that all pages and content are tagged properly and using relevant keywords will make your site more easily found.

Organizations can use their social media to create content that encourages the audience to interact with them. Continuous audience interaction can also lead to more positive reviews towards your organizations customer service. Social Media Platforms are huge in today’s society. Consumer’s lives revolve around Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and so on. Using social media to do online contests such as “share, like and comment on this post for a chance to win XYZ” is a perfect way to not only interact with your audience but will also help to drive new audience traffic to your site.

Organizations can use tracking tools, such as Google Analytics, to track their traffic. This can help to identify any trends to understand why something did or did not work. Being able to track and understand your online presence helps organizations to know what they’re doing right and in what areas they should work on.